Unfortunately, chronic pain occurs in 3 to 5 percent of patients following inguinal hernia repair. Whether or not your "enlarged" lymph nodes are causing you discomfort in the area of the hernia repair is impossible for me to say, from a distance. As for the lymph nodes themselves, in most cases, lymph nodes become enlarged due to inflammation (e.g., following a recent surgery in the same area of the body) or infection somewhere in the body (and not necessarily immediately adjacent to the area where the enlarged lymph nodes are present, either). Sometimes, they become enlarged due to viral infections (which do not respond to antibiotics), and sometimes they become enlarged due to bacterial infections (which may respond to antibiotics). In the absence of an obvious infection in the same region of the body, it is impossible to be certain what exactly is causing reactive changes within lymph nodes, and so some physicians may choose to empirically treat patients with acutely enlarged lymph nodes using antibiotics (and particularly if the enlarged lymph nodes are tender or painful).

There are other diseases that cause lymph node enlargement as well, including cancers that either arise within lymph nodes (lymphoma) or that spread to lymph nodes from other areas (metastatic cancer). Fortunately, these, and other non-infectious conditions that can also cause lymph node enlargement, are much less common that "lymphadenitis" (lymph node enlargement due to inflammation or infection). However, persistent lymph node enlargement (and, especially, progressive and painless enlargement of multiple lymph nodes) may require a lymph node biopsy to rule-out these more serious lymph node disorders.

Sincerely/ Robert A. Wascher, MD, FACS

http://doctorwascher.com